Dodgy widescreen on RTE's "The Restaurant"

gary_s

Anyone else noticed that on RTE's "The Restaurant", the dining room view is "squashed" (it's like a 4:3 picture squashed into 16:9), but the kitchen view is fine.

Is this supposed to be "arty", or just a good old-fashioned cock-up, or does the production company just not care?

John R

gary_s wrote:

Anyone else noticed that on RTE's "The Restaurant", the dining room view is "squashed" (it's like a 4:3 picture squashed into 16:9), but the kitchen view is fine.

Is this supposed to be "arty", or just a good old-fashioned cock-up, or does the production company just not care?

cock-up or cook-up?

Sorry.

It is just another in the long line of amateur Irish TV productions pretending to be professional, the only area RTE would ever score top marks on.

Mossy Monk

i noticed this a few times. why they use letterbox is beyond me

Telefís

Ever since day one they have done this on The Restaurant and it looks appalling. Indeed all programmes like this, and House Hunters and all that other IPU dross is often appallingly transmitted, in wild aspect ratios and with shimmering black bars of varying sizes

What is equally poor on The Rest are the crappy domestic/semi-professional camcorders they use to video the restaurant area - the image quality is shocking.
The contrast with the Beta of the kitchen is notable.
There is no excuse for such crappy production values - it's not Big Brother for crying out loud. Yet they're allowed get away with such cheapo practices because 'it's the digital age' and 'everyone's doing it' :rolleyes:

Also appalling with this programme are the Neff graphics for the stings before and after ad breaks. The text is way too large, fills the screen, and looks like it was chucked togther by a first student doing a design cert.
Every series they seem to tweak these graphics, and they only get worse every time. Crass, harsh heaps of visual rubbish.

So many graphics like these for RTÉ are woeful, especially end graphics for some production companies, with the RTÉ logo tacked on the bottom in a white rectangle, copied and pasted straight from a floppy disk sent out from Montrose.
It is simply unacceptable in 2005 - and yet the Production Unit that commissions these programmes has stringent requirements as to the size of the RTÉ logo and how long up it should be etc, and sting graphics etc, but clearly doesn't give a toss about design.

Lump

Mixed aspect ratios in programmes are generally **** up's in the edit.

Most of RTE's bought in stuff should be arced, like Eastenders. This will normally arc to 14:9, at least on the BBC's analogue network. However, I imagine RTE ARC to 4:3 Centre Cut out, as opposed to 4:3 Fullscreen (What it would be if it was shot 4:3)

If RTE buys a programme it will refuse to pay as much money if the incoming programme contains these faults (to save money) but if it is made inhouse, it costs more to fix. As a result they normally wont bother.

Big brother is shot 4:3 and would never contain aspect ratio problems, so that's a bad comparrison.

The BBC is the only english/Irish terristial station that broadcasts 16:9. Most problems come from bought in progs from the US or feature films.

Right Enough of that!

John

Lump

Mossy Monk wrote:

i noticed this a few times. why they use letterbox is beyond me

They use letterbox, to maintain the picture. Most 16:9 programmes should be made 14:9 Safe i.e. nothing vastly important should take place outside that box. In feature films particuarly this is not adheared to..... hence letterboxing will pretty much always occur when films as transmitted, and Deep letter boxing, as films are shot cinema scope 1.85:1.

I'm not sure, but eastenders (the only BBC, 16:9, programme rte broadcasts) would probably be arc'ed to 4:3 centre cut out, which means just that, it cuts out the centre and displays that, therefore loosing left and right of the picture, not ideal. The BBC got around this for their analogue network by compromising, and arc-ing to 14:9..... basically having shallow black bars top and bottom, and loosing a small amount left and right.

John

Telefís

Yes, most of us know the 14:9 compromise Lump (though thanks ) - which is why we are wondering about the deep 16:9 letterboxing that RTÉ goes for with The Restaurant - why not standard 14:9 letterboxing?

They manage to shoot most of their other 16:9 output to be 14:9 safe, so why not The Restaurant?
The deep letterboxing looks appalling - the very reason the 14:9 compromise was introduced. Especially if watching on a 14" portable set - sure you've virtually no image with a 16:9 letterbox!

Wouldn't be surprised if it's another shoddy, lazy aspect of the Restaurant, i.e. they can't be arsed framing to be 14:9 safe when shooting.

Lump

Telef&#237 wrote: »

What is equally poor on The Rest are the crappy domestic/semi-professional camcorders they use to video the restaurant area - the image quality is shocking.
The contrast with the Beta of the kitchen is notable.

Of course it's noticable, for a number of reasons. Firstlt , these Hidden cameras won't have decent lenses on them. Hence depth of field (Focus) and reaction to light is greatly reduced, causing focus shift and under lit/burnt out shots.

Secondly, Digi Beta is compressed at 2:1, with a video bit rate of 440Mbits per second (Around 158 Gigs per half hour)..... DV, has a compression of 5.7-ish (5) to one. obviously video bit rate is 1/5 the size.

On top of this, who know's what systems the programmes are being edited on. If the footage is transferred digitally or via analogue connections (This can caused analogue errors) What type of compression is the edit system using, even if it's still 5:1 compression does it use the sae type of compression as the camera? If not, compression artifacts can appear. Is there aliasing, or drop out.... etc etc.

There is no excuse for such crappy production values - it's not Big Brother for crying out loud. Yet they're allowed get away with such cheapo practices because 'it's the digital age' and 'everyone's doing it'

You've hit the nail on the head, the reason for it is all money. DV is 1/5th the quality, and about 1/10th the cost.

Yes, it is the digital age, but reality shows would never be made without DV.... not sure if that's a good or bad thing. But in the end of the day, you are going to see more and more DV.

Incidently, Sky compresses RTE massively, about 150:1 compression on it's mpeg play out. This is so it can fit more channels on its satellitte. Watch a movie with explosions in it on Sky, Count the blocks in the flames when something blows up You could probably count them on one hand. 5 blocks of yellow = Flame

The BBC compresses Digi Beta pictures at about 50-70:1 dependant on the type of prog. EG telly tubbies needs more band width, but News night doesn't. The multiplexers used in the broadcast centre vary the bit rate.

Jaysus, I learnt less in two weeks of a course

John

Telefís

these Hidden cameras won't have decent lenses on them. Hence depth of field (Focus) and reaction to light is greatly reduced, causing focus shift and under lit/burnt out shots.

Secondly, Digi Beta is compressed at 2:1, with a video bit rate of 440Mbits per second (Around 158 Gigs per half hour)..... DV, has a compression of 5.7-ish (5) to one. obviously video bit rate is 1/5 the size.

= crap cameras

same thing

Lump

No.... They are used for the hidden aspect. Do you know the size of a DigiBeta camera?

John

Lump

I'd love to know how many people actually knew about 14:9.


John

Mossy Monk

Lump wrote:

Sky compresses RTE massively

when watching anything it is rare to see 'blocks' on the screen

not that massively compressed
on the RTÉ transponder there is a total of 5 tv channels
RTÉ1
RTÉ2
TV3
TG4
Deutsche Welle

and 4 radio stations
RTÉ Radio 1
RTÉ 2FM
RTÉ Lyric FM
RTÉ RnaG

that isnt a whole lot for a dsat transponder considering some transponders have 7 or 8 television channels (Viacom anyone), granted radio takes up hardly any space

my only gripe with RTÉ on Sky is that it takes up way too much space on my Sky+ HDD. cant have everything my own way i suppose

Lump

what about all the other sky stations, euro sport, sky sport, sky one etc etc. There wont be any blocks on the RTE you receive via your ariel as it's analogue.

John

John R

Lump wrote:

what about all the other sky stations, euro sport, sky sport, sky one etc etc.

What about them? They are all on different transponders. Some are far more compressed than others. I have alwas found the BBC to have far worse pixellation than RTE on 28.8, with all the regional variations they stuff many more channels on their transponders than is on the RTE one.

Lump wrote:

There wont be any blocks on the RTE you receive via your ariel as it's analogue.

True, but it isn't in widescreen and getting a clean analogue reception is not possible for most people.



Comparing bitrates between formats is not a good way of working out which have more pixellation or artefacts as the ability of different formats to compress varies by huge amounts (a 2 hour film on MPEG2 DVD is 4.7GB but an XVID of 700MB gives similar results) and the quality of the encoding engine also has a great deal to do with it.

Mossy Monk

Lump wrote:

what about all the other sky stations, euro sport, sky sport, sky one etc etc. There wont be any blocks on the RTE you receive via your ariel as it's analogue.

John

RTÉ through analogue has nothing to do with what's being broadcast on DSAT. the RTÉ on DSAT suffers from no pixellation from what i see. other hannels do

Lump

REALLY! Thanks for pointing that out.

I'm glad you told me that the analogue transmittion doesn't go via a digital satellitte.

John

Mossy Monk

hold on a second
in my post i was on about DSAT transponders then you respond with

There wont be any blocks on the RTE you receive via your ariel as it's analogue.

thank you for clarifying that for me

Lump

Yes, that you recieve via your standard analogue ariel. Those two points (The sky eurosport etc) were supposed to be seperate. Crossed wires and all.

John

Digger

Lump wrote:

I'm not sure, but eastenders (the only BBC, 16:9, programme rte broadcasts) would probably be arc'ed to 4:3 centre cut out, which means just that, it cuts out the centre and displays that, therefore loosing left and right of the picture, not ideal. The BBC got around this for their analogue network by compromising, and arc-ing to 14:9..... basically having shallow black bars top and bottom, and loosing a small amount left and right.

John

EastEnders is transmitted 16:9 by RTE on the Sky platform and ARC'd 14:9 for Terrestrial, as one would expect. This is the accepted standard.

Digger

Lump wrote:

Incidently, Sky compresses RTE massively, about 150:1 compression on it's mpeg play out.

Jaysus, I learnt less in two weeks of a course

John

Not True. RTE on Sky seems to be of very good quality.

RainyDay

Has anyone got any good sources which show which shows being broadcast on terrestrial TV were actually shot in widescreen 16:9?

gary_s

And speaking of "The Restaurant", at least 50% of the script for each show seems to be recycled from the previous week's show, a real cut-and-paste effort. Right down to the obligatory mention of how many hours are left until the restaurant opens.

And when you take away 6 minutes or so from the 30 for ad breaks, that only leaves 50% of 24 minutes, i.e. 12 minutes for new content.

And everything is explained *from scratch* every week, as if all viewers have never seen the show before.

Arrgrggghh! RTE and its crappy production values. They need Gordon Ramsey to get into the restaurant and kick some arse... (speaking of which he's back on TV3 this Thurs with the US version of Hell's Kitchen)